


little sparrow (you flew too high)

by Sashaya



Series: All the single ladies (grab your gal-pals) [15]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, spoilers for death of the outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-09 03:35:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14708357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sashaya/pseuds/Sashaya
Summary: She won’t die like a street rat, curled into herself and crying.





	little sparrow (you flew too high)

**Author's Note:**

> **_Disclaimer:_** _I don't own any of the characters._
> 
>  _A/N:_ Unbeta'ed work. 
> 
> If you want to say ' _hi_ ' (or point out my mistakes) - pop in at [SharkTofu](http://sharktofu.tumblr.com/).

There’s something eerily familiar in the coldness staining her hand, in the way the black sludge tries to imitate blood. It forces a memory out of her, pushes the unforgiving Dunwall river to the front of her tired mind, ice-cold water closing over her head, bitter waste forcing its way down her throat. She can feel her lungs burn, scream in agony as she tries and fails to catch her breath, as she slowly drowns in the imaginary dark waters. Her heartbeat picks up, quickens and flutters like a wild animal, a spooked rabbit before it finishes its short life in the predator’s merciless jaws. 

The silver rays of defiance push her to fight, to grab at her throat and claw at her skin as if trying to make another way for air to enter her body, to resurrect her even before she dies. Her body wants to crumble, fall apart piece by piece like a forgotten statue. 

She won’t die like a street rat, curled into herself and crying. 

She won’t die like Deirdre. 

There’s a body of a god by her feet, dethroned and defeated, deformed into remains of a young boy, a sewer-dweller ( _not like her, no_ ). She marked him like a painting with black blood and shards of a legendary sword embedded in his pale flesh. He keeps smiling at her, smirking like he knows even more secrets now, his never-seeing eyes are open and fixed at her, mocking her, daring her – tempting her to tear them out and squash them under her heavy boots. She spits on his carcass with venom, stands over him like a victor she is, while her body burns and crumbles. 

There’s no respect for dead men and dead gods in her black-and-gray world. The corpses always had the deepest pockets and deadly patience for small, unsteady hands. 

There’s something coiling in her chest, something vicious and unrelenting, biting through bone and skin, eating through her organs in its way to freedom. It stakes claim on the single, muffled cry of pain escaping her parched lips. It’s enough to make her control slip, to make her fall to her knees and force teardrops down her right cheek. She clutches at her cursed arm, swears and threats tumbling out of her mouth like a prayer. There’s no time between flashes of pain to wonder if that’s her fated end. If that’s how she’s been destined to die? Was she supposed to find her death in the cursed Void, surrounded by the vast emptiness of this cruel, twisted world?

She bites her lip, draws blood until it flows freely down her chin. She doesn’t wonder if Daud would be proud of her. Maybe that thought flickered through her mind sometimes, when she was young and on the run, away from her home, away from her betrayed mentor. 

He started her on this journey, pointed her the way and gave her the knowledge to succeed, but it was her, who fulfilled this contract. It was her, who slashed and sneaked through shadows like a vengeful ghost. It was her, who reached the unreachable; who made it where no-one else have; who managed to do, what everyone else failed to achieve. 

She’s the one, who killed a god.

His pride is insignificant in her glory. 

The Void around her vibrates with unspoken power, dark and hungry, and she would be a fool if she didn’t reach for it. She closes her human, breakable fist around the tear in space, the tear in time itself, and she holds it. Pulls. 

There’s a hum around her, whispers of promises of painless death if she lets go. There’s a hum, almost a song forming in her mouth, and she yanks harder. 

She will not go without a fight. 

Her veins open, slashed by an invisible power, that feasts on her blood, draining and drinking greedily. 

She lifts her head, heavy and hazy, mist surrounding her every thought. There’s a face staring right at her, taunting her with soft eyes and sweet constellations of freckles sprinkled across lifeless cheeks. 

“My sweet, little Deirdre,” she whispers in a broken language, sharp and hard on her tongue. It cuts her with every syllable, every dot and makes her spit black sludge. 

“My clever Lurk,” the phantom smiles, soft and sweet, and wearing Deirdre’s face. 

She can – _she wants_ – to die like this. 

“No, my clever ghost,” Deirdre’s lips curl around the sharp letters like they’re made of silk, pour from her rosy lips like honey. “No more dying for you, my love. It’s your final rebirth, your true beginning.”

Deirdre leans forward, teases her with how close she is, and breathes _power_ into Billie’s mouth, into her shut throat, into her collapsed lungs. 

Billie falls in her embrace with coal eyes, lifeless and all-seeing, and she hums. She hums _a whale song_ , that comes from her chest and her closed lips. 

“My sweet, little Deirdre,” Billie strokes the pale, freckled cheek with careful, trusting fingers. “What have you done?”

“My clever Lurk, you killed a god. Who deserves that title more than you?”

“Don’t leave me,” she whispers, begs like a lost child, forgotten gutter rascal. “Not again.”

“I won’t, my love,” the red hair under Billie’s hand feel smooth and real, they smell like ashes. “I’ll stay by your side for as long as you let me.”

“Forever then.”

“Forever.”

**Author's Note:**

> I don't think I'm actually spoilering DotO, but better save than sorry, right?


End file.
